This spring 2013 I interned in a nutrition company in Philadelphia named Family, Food, LLC. Family Food, LLC is an organization which offers nutrition counseling either to children (in home visits) or adults (in corporate wellness). The client meets with a Registered dietitian one on one, and gets counseling in any nutrition subject. This organization was founded and is owned by Krista Yoder Latortue, which is a Registered Dietitian and a child nutrition expert. Krista is also the executive director of Family Food, LLC, and was my supervisor during this semester.

I had three learning objectives for my internship this semester. The first one was to learn how to get involved and attract a possible client in nutrition counseling by attending to health fairs, shadow dietitians, and to study about the subject. The second learning objective was to learn how to work with a client that does not have motivation and does not follow the dietitian's advice, by at least shadowing two dietitians and attending to health fairs. Finally, I wanted to learn how to make an appropriate report of either clients, or registered dietitians I have shadowed.

Work/Projects

I registered for a 5 credit internship, which means working on it 15 hours a week. This was a lot of responsibility. My executive director gave me a calendar for the four months that I was going to be a part of her company. It was organized in weeks, and what to I need to every week for the four months that I was going to inter for Family Food, LLC. I did not need to go to an office to accomplish all of the work to do, I could do it from my place, but I had to finish every assignment for the week on the date due of it. My responsibilities for the semester were to become familiar with the company I was interning on, translate handout from English to Spanish, assess annual program parameters, assists with insurance billing, add contacts to newsletter database, and create a monthly newsletter using the existing template. I was also expected to do attend health fairs and do shadow registered dietitians certain amount of hours during the semester.

The first assignment that I had was to become familiar with Family Food LLC. I read a power point that the Registered Dietitians use as a guidance for their sessions with clients. I also read Nutrition Care Manuals, and Family Food's own manual as well. I revised the handout that the organization gives to clients or people that are interested in nutrition.

My first project was to shadow registered dietitians in their appointments with clients. I followed three different dietitians during the semester in corporate wellness and in home visits. After shadowing them, I wrote a report on what I saw and how was the dietitian with the client.

My second project was to translate seven different handout from English to Spanish. This handout were given to clients, they were about healthy eating, portion sizes, picky eating, and baby or toddler nutritional information.

I learned how to work with the billing system that Family Food LLC works with. I entered about 160 clients in to the billing system.

Another project that I worked on was to add about 1,500 clients in to a newsletter database, and then created a newsletter of Iron and its sources and send it to the database.

My last big project was to assist with assessing annual parameters, that is to see how are the clients doing with the nutrition counseling and how it has helped them. For example if they loss weight, or if they included more fruits and vegetables in their diets.

Finally, during the semester I attend to three health fairs to try to get new clients for Family Food LLC. The first one in Septa, the second one in Temple University Hospital, the third one in Temple University, and finally in LaSalle University.

Learning

There was a lot of learning during my internship this semester. First of all I learned a lot if things just by reading the manuals at the beginning. Some concepts are different than in Ecuador, so it was important for me to keep up with what is happening here, because I realized my internship in Philadelphia. In every project I worked on I learned many new things. Shadowing was so important for me, because I was able to see how registered dietitians interact with clients, and what type of advice do they give them. I learned many tips on how to act when clients are showing resistance or are not motivated, which was a part of my learning objectives. Then in the billing project, I learned the business part of nutrition, which is really necessary as well, but we don’t learn this in class. I learned how to use the billing program and how to enter client's information on the billing sheets. With practice I got better at it. When working on the project of the newsletter, I learned how to make a database, and also more things about the topic that I chose, iron. In my last project, I also learned something that I have never done before, that was to work on assessing annual perimeters. This was really helpful because I read so many notes that dietitians wrote about clients, so I learned many advices or tips that the dietitians gave to their clients, and with that I saw if the advice worked. Finally in the health fairs, I learned how to interact with clients and to make them interested in nutrition counseling, which was part of my learning objectives as well.

Future Plans

This experience has only made me to love my career even more. I had so much fun working on everything that was assigned to me during this internship. I would even want to work on something really similar when I return back home. I feel that I know so much more and will feel confident in my next job, because I learned a little bit of everything. This internship made me improve managing my time, which was one of the competencies for acquisition that I had. Since I had to hand in my work every week, I was forced to organize myself and complete all of my tasks. I also used the competency that I exhibited which was group work, when I went to health fairs.

Preparation/Recommendation

I think it is really important to take the internship either when you are a junior or senior, because that way you have most of your major classes. I think that they do prepare you well for the internship. The only thing I will suggest is maybe include something of nutrition business in a course.